1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a character recognition device for recognizing characters inputted through a touch screen in an information instrument such as a hand phone, PDA (Personal Digital Assistant), palm-sized computer, etc.
2. Description of the Related Art
At present, information instruments can be provided with a touch screen or digitizer to make it possible for the user to input character data, which is recognized by a character recognition device. In order to correctly recognize what characters are inputted by a user through such an information instrument, the character recognition device should be provided with means for determining the completion of inputting the characters. Particularly, a Korean character generally consists of a lot of strokes respectively representing the initial, intermediate and last sounds, and therefore, it is much more difficult to correctly determine the completion of a Korean character compared to Indo-European languages such as English. Naturally, the speed with which the character recognition device recognizes a Korean character is significantly reduced compared to the speed with which the character recognition device recognizes an English character. Conventionally, the character recognition device recognizes a character represented by the inputted characters as follows:
The first method is to set a predetermined waiting threshold time which is used to determine the completion of inputting characters. Namely, if there is no further input by the user within the threshold time, it is determined that the character is completed. Then, the character recognition procedure is performed to identify the completed character represented by the inputted characters. The second method is to define a particular position on the touch screen as the completion signaling zone, which is touched to signal when the character is complete. The third method is to divide the touch screen into two parts, one of which is used as the character input screen, and the other as a determination screen which displays the inputted characters to represent the completion of inputting characters. The fourth method is to set the device to perform character recognition at the completion of each stroke. However, the first method requires a waiting threshold time period prior to the character recognition process, thus resulting in time consumption. The second method requires additional user input to represent the completion of inputting characters. The third method is not applicable to the small size of the display on a hand phone. The last method is also hardly applicable to the Korean language, which consists of initial, intermediate and last sound characters, though it may be readily applied to the English language.